The Pond In The Woods by Martin Owton

I was taking Hattersley for a walk up through the woods heading vaguely up towards the Long Mynd. It was early spring with just enough warmth to bring out the sweet smell of the pine resin. I needed the rest so I'd traded my soul for a few days at the cottage, anything to get away from the hell that is south London and being an on-call psychiatrist. Caroline hadn't phoned for two months so I supposed that was that; another tender fruit puréed by the inexorable pressure of modern medical practice. My uncle Roger had left me the place and I wished the old rascal was still around to have a good old whinge to and then get drunk with. But that had been what killed him. The drink rather than the whinging of course. So now I rather haphazardly let the place as a holiday retreat. Too early in the season for anyone yet and it made plenty of sense to come up, open the windows and let the spring air blow through it and me.

I was pausing in a clearing beside what Roger had called the fairy pond. The beeches were just coming into the first haze of green and I was admiring the bluebells, not yet blue but verdant green. I was thinking of coming up with my camera in a couple of weeks time to catch the carpet of blue when I heard the voice. A girl's voice, young and frightened.

'Please help me.' I looked around. The sound had been close, very close. Hattersley snuffled happily around the tree roots with no sign that he'd heard anything. I looked hard at the scene imagining someone hiding but there was nowhere close enough to conceal the speaker.

'It's all gone so wrong, please help me.' I spun right around. This time Hattersley did look up but only because I'd fallen over and he thought this was a game.

'Sod off you old fool.' I said as I pushed the old dog off me. He looked at me with those lugubrious eyes that had made me call him after the distinguished politician. He looked so offended that I threw him a stick to chase. Typically he chased it half way then sat down to watch as I went to fetch it.

'Don't leave me, not now.' There was urgency in the voice and a catch in the throat that said tears were close. There was still no-one within sight yet my ears told me the girl was at my shoulder. Uneasily I picked up the stick and kept walking resolutely with all my body language saying that I knew exactly where I was going.

'Please.' The voice was more distant now, definitely located around that pond and clearing. I was relieved. Auditory hallucinations have a very bad press in my trade, you can't usually walk away from them.

I thought hard about the experience that evening, hard enough to noticeably dent the stock of drink I had brought with me. There had not been anyone else there and I had heard the voice of someone or something that knew I was there. The phenomenon was tied to the location, there hadn't been enough wind to rustle the almost non existent foliage and I had not been drunk. I was now so I went to bed and resolved to put it out of my mind.

I failed of course. The incident nagged at me all the next morning as I tried to concentrate on the papers I'd brought with me. I wondered if there was anyone I dared tell about it, convince them to go to the spot and see if they could hear it. Probably not. Most of my friends would just think it was a manifestation of that old joke about psychiatrists and their patients. You know the one. 'What's the difference between psychiatrists and their patients? The patients sometimes get better.' My curiosity bump was itching now though, I was going to have to have another look.

I decided to approach from a different direction so I took Hattersley up onto the ridge and walked the paws off the fat old sluggard before we came down through the woods towards the pond in the clearing. It was another beautiful still clear day with enough warmth to make a jacket a burden. We met a pair of mountain bikers and a solitary horseman but they made exactly the noise you'd expect them to make and there had been no strange echoes of their passage. I stopped a couple of hundred yards short of the clearing determined to map the locus of this weirdness. I crept stealthily forward until I could see down into the dip that held the pond.

'Please help me.' Quite clear. The voice of a distressed young woman. I turned very slowly around. There was no-one in sight.

'It's all gone so wrong, please help me.' I reached into my jacket and pulled out my Dictaphone. Not very sensitive but the best I could do, it might pick up something.

'It's all gone so wrong, please help me.' I held up the recorder. Surely that had been loud enough. Not loud enough for old Hattersley to hear anyway as he shuffled through last autumn's leaves in search of God knows what.

'Don't let me die here please.' I looked around still holding the recorder up. Nothing.

'Don't leave me, please, please help.' The voice pleaded with me all the way out of the clearing, growing fainter, until I was out of sight of the pond.

Back in the cottage I made myself a strong scotch and American before I listened to the recording. I sat down and pushed playback. There was faint bird-song. Hatterlsley's excavations and my voice calling 'I can't help you if I can't see you.' Nothing else. I played it through several times then I wiped over it. Then I poured another drink.

It nagged at me all the way back down the M40. I turned all manner of explanations over in my head but none fitted. I was sure there was no-one else around the pond. Once could have been someone playing a prank but not twice and anyway the recorder would have picked up the sound. I wasn't drunk or on any medication so I was left with some kind of supernatural event and that made me very uncomfortable; but so did the memory of that frightened little voice. She tugged at me at every set of traffic lights on the South Circular and I arrived back at the hospital in a really bad temper and consequently didn't sleep at all well. Over the next few days I tried to forget about it and lose myself in my work; which should have been easy with all I had to do, after all, I got to see plenty of weirdness every shift. I failed and after I'd dreamt of her voice for the third time I decided I had to talk to someone about it.

Tom Richards was an old classmate of mine at George's who'd had the courage to go and follow what he was really interested in and make a career of it. Some rich old eccentric had endowed a fellowship so he'd got tenure at Barts as a researcher in parapsychology. We hadn't been close but we'd got drunk together at a few parties and I thought that was close enough so I gave him a call. He was coming down south of the river anyway and was only too happy to drop in. We went to the Phoenix and firkin and I told him my tale over two pints of Dogbolter.

'Shame you wiped that tape,' was the first thing he said, 'might have been able to get something on enhancement.'

'I really don't think there was anything on it, anyway the dog didn't react. Hattersley may be old and fat but he can hear a tin being opened at three hundred yards.'

'None that I'm aware of, Uncle Roger never mentioned any and he told me plenty of tall tales about other places.'

'Quite, but I was trying to establish if you are unusually sensitive. Have you ever seen a ghost?'

'Much to my disappointment no. The only spirits I generally deal with come out of a bottle.'

'Very strange. I've never heard of anything like this. You are going back aren't you?'

'Yes.' I had to get to the bottom of it and anyway her voice was still driving me.

'I'd really like to come up with you but the next few weeks are going to be difficult. Do let me know what happens though, I am fascinated.'

I couldn't get back for two weeks. Two long weeks with that plaintive voice playing on a loop in my head, as I struggled for the lost souls of south London. At last, with time off for good behaviour I headed west, this time without Hattersley who I deposited on my suburban brother. I got to the cottage late, too late to go out so I set the alarm and went to bed. I woke well before the time I'd set on the clock, it was just getting light but I didn't want to go back to sleep. I dressed and set out for the pond in the woods with my camera to try and capture the bluebells in the early morning light. The mist filled the dip where the pond lay as I reached the clearing and the whole scene had a fascinating stillness as if I could hear the trees growing. I moved as quietly as possible to avoid breaking the scene. The bluebells carpeted the ground beneath the beeches and I concentrated on getting the shot. I had taken half a roll when I trod on a dry twig, a couple of birds took off from the undergrowth and broke the silence. I stood stock still then I heard it.

'Please help me.' The voice came from the direction of the pond. I moved that way and then I saw the dark prone figure half buried in the mist. I hesitated not quite sure what I was looking at.

'It's all hone so wrong, please help me.' That decided me. I ran to her. She was young and thin and very cold. She might have been pretty but that was before she had spent the night beside the pond. Her hair was matted in dreadlocks, plastered across her face. I pulled it back to look into her eyes, they were blue and glazed with the pupils dilated wide.

'Don't leave me, not now.' She was drifting in and out of consciousness and I was not sure if she was talking to me. I suspected there was more than hypothermia at work here.

'Don't let me die here please.' She was wearing a thin ragged black sweatshirt and leggings. I took off my jacket and wrapped her in it and then called for the ambulance on my mobile. She passed out again and I took a look in her bag. Funny how women take their handbag with them wherever they go even when committing suicide. Sure enough there was an empty pill bottle but it had no label. I hoped to God it wasn't paracetamol. That can really screw you up if you survive and leave you needing a liver transplant. She was still out so I picked her up, bag and baggage, and set out for the nearest point on the road to meet the ambulence.

She was a little improved when I got to the top of the lane, her breathing was deeper and more regular but she still drifted in and out of consciousness. Every time she came back I tried to find out what she had taken and when but all I got was the loop tape. I called the ambulance again to tell them where we were and then waited a geological era for them to arrive.

I went with her to the hospital where the medical machine took over and I was surplus to requirements. I left them the empty pill bottle and got a taxi back to the cottage for breakfast. I went back in the evening to see how she was progressing. She was going to make it. They'd analysed traces left in the bottle and found she'd taken sleeping pills; enough to kill her without the hypothermia in time. They reckoned she'd taken them sometime about two in the morning judging by the metabolic ratios. It I hadn't found her she'd have been dead by midmorning.

She was sitting up next day but not saying much. I spent most of the morning digging the story out of her between the tears. She had been with a group of travellers staying on a site nearby, she had had a boyfriend who had kicked her around and gone off when the fancy took him but had come back to die on her. She was not at all clear how he had died but he seemed to have been a heavy drug user. She was traumatised and quite withdrawn but I was unclear on whether this was due to more than her very recent brush with the reaper.

I came to see her every day for the next few days until the hospital declared her mended in body. In that time I watched her become more withdrawn until she turned to face the wall and would speak to no-one except me. Not that what she said to me was much more informative. She felt worthless and had deserved to die; she did not blame me for saving her but I shouldn't get too close to her because she was bad luck and ended up hurting everyone. When the hospital wanted the bed I managed to get her referred to my clinic in London, there did not seem to be anyone else who wanted her.

Tom Richards was an almost constant visitor for the best part of a month. We completely failed to come up with any explanation no matter how many pints of Dogbolter we sank. Some form of telepathy obviously; particularly when she told me she'd dreamt about me several times in the weeks before I found her, but beyond that a mystery. It goes without saying that this formed a very special bond between us.

Modern medication can be pretty wonderful on occasions, particularly the SSRIs like fluoxetine. Even in the trade we sometimes stand back in amazement at how people's lives can be turned around. Of course I had to pass her on to another doctor when I realised I was getting involved, the profession disapproves very strongly of that sort of thing.

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